A Life Beyond The Dream History

A Life Beyond The Dream

Originally Performed By	Ghosts of the Forest
Original Album	Sigma Oasis (2020)
Appears On
Music/Lyrics	Anastasio
Vocals	Trey (lead), Mike, Page (backing)
Historian	donttouchthatknob
Last Update	2026-02-01

History

Picture, if you will: It’s some year between 2019 and the present day. You’re at whatever large venue is closest to you. Phish have just played a mind-melting evening of music. All your favorite songs, with monumental and dynamic jams, and a healthy sprinkling of bust-outs. The second set has just finished, and you and your show buddies are abuzz with excitement. One of your buddies says, “I wonder what the encore’s gonna be.” But in your heart, you know it doesn’t matter. You’ve just seen a life-changing show. They can play whatever the hell they want.

The band walks back out on stage. The crowd goes nuts, ready to have their minds blown one last time before heading back to their cars and their balloons. And then, Trey sings that infamous line: “When we were talking…” The crowd groans. Some people start leaving the venue. Phish discussions across the internet devolve into complaints and occasional defense. But one thing’s for certain: Trey is having a blast.

It’s an extreme scene but a familiar one if you’ve ever had the pleasure to catch “A Life Beyond the Dream” live. It would just be dishonest if I didn’t open this history by saying how much some of the fanbase seems to hate this song. When there are discussions about “Worst Phish Songs” or “What Song Should Phish Take Out of Rotation,” the song is usually up there with “Soul Planet” and “More.” It’s a song that draws consistent ire. Why?

“A Life Beyond the Dream” was written by Trey for Ghosts of the Forest, a new band he debuted in 2019. As his longtime friend Chris Cottrell battled cancer, Trey found himself introspective about death and life. He wrote twenty-something songs on the subject and put a band together, combining Fish and members of TAB. “ALBTD” debuted on the first night of the tour. Ghosts of the Forest was experimental for Trey, in that they played the same setlist every night. So every night you heard “A Life Beyond the Dream” in the exact same spot – right after “Wider” and right before “In This Bubble.”

When the Ghosts of the Forest put out their self-titled album a week later, “ALBTD” was not on it. But, Trey was not done with the song. TAB would go on to play it a couple of times during their 2019 spring tour, always as a second set ballad. Musically, the song premiered in pretty much its final form. The composed part never changed, with the only improvisation coming from a solo at the end.

As Phish began their 2019 summer tour, the Ghosts of the Forest songs quickly made their way into rotation. On 6/19/19, Phish played their first “ALBTD” as the final song in an encore. Looking at online discussions of the show, the consensus seems to be mild novelty. It was cool to hear a new song, but nobody seemed to have strong feelings about it. The song made a few more appearances on the tour, always as an encore, and its infamy began to grow. By the end of the tour, the song was pretty consistently met with grumbles. It’s boring. It’s weak. It’s not an encore.

Trey was unswayed, playing “A Life Beyond the Dream” as much as he could with TAB and Phish through the end of 2019. The song had a few appearances with high profile guests, such as on 10/12/19 where Trey played it on Chris Thile’s “Live From Here” with Thile and Sarah Jarosz. But, if you ask people for the best version of “A Life Beyond the Dream,” you’ll pretty consistently get the same answer.

On 8/23/19, Trey was a headliner at the Lockn’ Festival, where he was joined by Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi. “A Life Beyond the Dream” was played in the middle of the second set, performed as a duet between Tedeschi and Trey. The combination of Tedeschi’s powerful vocals and Trucks’ beautiful guitar solo lead to a rendition that soars.

Phish and Trey continued to play the song through the start of the pandemic. It was primarily an encore song, but slowly started to find itself as the Set 2 Ballad. It even found itself as the penultimate song on Sigma Oasis, Phish’s 2020 studio album. This song was faithful to all the previous renditions, augmented by a string arrangement by Don Hart.

While we find ourselves in the pause COVID-19 put us in, let’s talk about what the song is about. Like most of the Ghosts of the Forest songs, Trey wrote this while thinking about his friend Chris Cottrell. But, as Trey mentioned in a Relix interview, “I was writing about other people and feelings and memories from my life, beyond Chris specifically.”

The verses of the song talk about spending time with a person, time that is ultimately fleeting. The first verse talks about how comfortable the singer was with this person, not needing to hide and feeling like the other person opened up to him. But that time ends, even if the narrator “didn’t want to leave.” The second verse talks more specifically about the fleeting nature of time- memories that melt away. But the narrator lets these feelings of longing roll by, because they can see a life beyond the dream.

So, what is the dream? This. Everything. Being alive. Robert Hunter once wrote that “this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago.” For centuries children have been singing about how “merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” The life you’re living right now is a memory you’ll have in future. And like dreams, all lives end. And what is the life beyond this dream?

This connection between dreaming and living is a motif that recurs throughout Ghosts of the Forest. “Mint Siren Dream” is about living in a dream – either your own or somebody else’s – with lyrics like “we live in memories that used to be somebody's dream.” “Drift While You’re Sleeping” explores dreams as an escape from the pain of living, and how all dreams (and lives) end. “Beneath a Sea of Stars” is about dancing through a dream, and the ghosts finding you while awake.

Like most Phish songs, the lyrics are up for interpretation. Trey didn’t necessarily mean that life is literally a dream, though that was how Jon Fishman read it. As Trey tells it: “Fish really liked it when he heard it, and said that it conjured up thoughts that ‘this is the dream,’ what we view as reality might be the dream.” Maybe the dream isn’t life, the dream is death. As Hamlet once said, “to die, to sleep- to sleep, perchance, to dream.” People connect with the song in different ways. Regardless, it is ultimately optimistic. Don’t give up hope. Keep dreaming.

Phish has kept “ALBTD” in regular rotation, never going more than 13 shows without playing it. It remains one of the most played Ghosts of the Forest songs, neck and neck with “Ruby Waves.” It has pretty consistently been either an encore or a Set 2 Ballad, with two appearances in set 1 (NYE 23 and NYE 25).

It has remained controversial among fans; an “ALBTD” encore can get people running to their cars, but you’ll also hear passionate defenses. There are a couple versions worth noting: 8/26/23 features a sit-in from Derek Trucks, and on 4/20/24 Trey plays acoustic guitar at the beginning of the song.

The song has also remained steady in Trey rotation, whether it’s TAB, solo acoustic, or the Beacon Jams. A rendition particularly worth noting comes from TAB’s 10/3/21 show at Radio City Music Hall. Saxophonist James Casey sat out most of that tour due to his recent cancer diagnosis. For the last show of the tour, Casey joined the band for the encore. After a stirring rendition of “Rise/Come Together,” Casey and Trey sang together on a beautiful “A Life Beyond the Dream.” Casey’s illness adds a depth to the song… it is heartbreaking to hear him sing “I wanted more.”

And that’s where we’ll leave it for now. A beautiful rendition of a controversial song. A meaningful song that explores the big questions of existence. A boring song that sucks all the air out of the room. A beautiful song that clearly means the world to Trey. A life beyond the dream.

Last significant update: 1/9/26